Local Authorities in Shanxi Province Ban Magazine: Not Government Licensed, Too Many Negative Stories

September 22, 2006

Officials with the local division of the General Administration of Press and Publication in Luliang, Shanxi province, have banned the Luliang Weekly, shut down its editorial organization, and fired its staff, according to an August 8 report (in Chinese) on the National Strike Down Pornography and Sweep Away Illegal Publications Task Force Web site. The report said that officials imposed these sanctions because the publishers of the Shanxi Commercial Daily (which is apparently a "legal" publication in China) had been publishing the Luliang Weekly since March 2005 without government authorization, and "the articles it carried were mostly negative reports, which severely violated relevant national regulations, and which had an adverse effect on society."